Ian Douglas joined the Telegraph in 1999 when the web was young and simple, and is now head of digital production. He writes about technology, science, the internet and beekeeping.

Registered supporters of Barack Obama will today have received an email urging them to support the campaign to bring state-sponsored healthcare to the American people by writing to their local newspapers.

Dr Alice Chen, a practicing doctor in Los Angeles and vice president of Doctors for America, a pro-reform group, gave her name to the email from Organising for America, a group within the Democratic National Committee. In it, she cites the support of the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association and calls on anyone who wants to see the state pay the medical bills of the poorer members of society in the US to contact the press and make their views known.

British political campaigns, even the Conservatives' new grass roots participation website myconservatives.com, would leave it at that, but this is the Obama camp, the team that financed the large part of an election from online donations, and they're not about to leave the job half done. Click on the large smiling picture of Dr Chen and type your zip code into a box and you'll be given a list of the newspapers you might want to contact, either locally or nationally, complete with average circulation figures.

Choose your favourites and enter your contact details into a nicely designed form and you'll be taken through to a third page where you can write your email. Key messages on the benefits of healthcare and the President's plan are displayed on the right to help break your writer's block. In four clicks and a little typing, you have sent your email and added your voice to the crowd.

For drumming up support, this is a superb tool. It's easy to use, it demands very little of the user and it takes the support registered and delivers it to the places where it will make the most difference.